Mochi Kinling
Photograph something alive and Kinling turns it into a companion with a passport. If something isn't working, or you want to tell us what you think, there's a real person at the other end of the links below.
It says it can't find anything in my photo.
Kinling looks for a clear foreground subject, so it struggles with a busy background, a very distant subject, or something the same colour as what's behind it. Get closer and fill more of the frame. If it still can't, you can awaken it anyway as a Living Sticker — the whole picture becomes the companion. That is a real Kinling, not a consolation prize.
Why won't it tell me what species this is?
Because it doesn't reliably know, and pretending otherwise would be worse than useless. Kinling is good at shape — it can usually tell a four-winged insect from a flowering plant — and much weaker at naming. So it shows a guess with how sure it is, hedged, and lets you correct it. It will never tell you whether something is safe to touch, eat, pick up or move, and you should never use it that way.
Mine only moves as one piece. Someone else's has moving wings.
There are three levels. A full rig animates each part separately and needs the app to be confident about where those parts are. A basic rig moves the whole body — sways, leans, glows. A Living Sticker breathes and shimmers. Which one you get depends on how clearly the shape read, and you can always ask for a simpler one.
I haven't opened the app in weeks. Is my Kinling all right?
Yes. Nothing in Kinling dies, wilts permanently, or is lost. After a long absence you'll find it dormant — quieter, dimmer, slower — and a single bit of care brings it fully back. There are no streaks to break and nothing to feel bad about.
It isn't growing.
Growing needs three things at once: time passing, variety in what you do, and memories worth keeping. Tapping the same button repeatedly is pleasant and deliberately gets you nowhere. Try a different kind of care, add a memory, and come back another day — the habitat screen tells you what's still missing.
How do I move my Kinling to another passport page?
Press and hold it, then pick a page. How it travels depends on what it is — a butterfly flies, a plant curls into a seed and drifts across. Drag to move it, pinch to resize, twist to rotate. Nothing is redrawn when you do this; the app is just remembering where you put it.
Do my photos get uploaded anywhere?
No. Everything happens on your phone, and the app works with the network switched off. There's no account and no analytics. The full detail is in the privacy policy.
How do I delete a photo without losing the Kinling?
Settings → Your data, then pick the Kinling. You can delete the original photograph on its own, delete the generated artwork, or delete the whole Kinling. Each really removes the files rather than hiding them.
Some things say "Preview" or "Coming later".
Those aren't built yet — Friends and shared care in particular are sample data, and labelled as such. Nothing in the app is behind a payment today.
Kinling is for photographing living things, not collecting them. A photograph is enough — nothing needs to be picked, caught, moved or brought indoors for the app to work, and nothing it tells you should be used to decide whether something is safe to handle.
Email hello@ptk-studio.com — tell us your iPhone model and iOS version if something is broken, and roughly what you were photographing, and we'll get back to you.
Short version: your photographs, your Kinlings and your notes never leave your phone, and we don't ask who you are. The full detail is in the privacy policy.